Three Upon the Cross
by Muchitsujo
Summary: Chapter two up! In Wolfwood's own lost past he has killed many; but three will haunt him forever. Their names engraved upon his cross he can never forget them...please R&R. So far only a PG13 rating...that mite change...I don't know though...
1. The Death of a Child

**The Death of a Child**

My life has become complicated in the past several weeks. No, that's not quite fair, my life has always been very complicated; but it has taken many interesting turns since my life was saved by a young man dressed in red and two young insurance girls. I have learned many new things and the Christian faith seems to be much more revealed to me since met them. Even my faith in God has grown. As a priest I taught the people, but I could never be sure what I was really saying; or if I really believed what I was teaching. But I'm getting way ahead of my self; my story starts long before I ever met the man known as Vash the Stampede. It begins eight years after the destruction of July...

I first picked up a gun at the age of seven. And I fired it. The shot rang out clear and bold. I remember that the trigger was strangely easy to pull. The bullet hit its target with a dull thud. I laughed. I laughed because that one shot had silenced the sickening trash who had titled himself my guardian. He fell to the ground before me and spoke no more. It was that simple. All the simple troubles of my short life had been solved with that single shot. And so I was free. Yes, tomorrow things would be different...tomorrow. But things always go from bad to worse. My short life of simple troubles became an endless nightmare of killings. I can't escape. The past always catches you in the end.

The reason I killed was also simple. I had been hired because I was the closest one to my guardian. I remember it plainly. One day a tall dark man with red eyes approached me with a proposition. If I completed what he asked I would be paid, and he would take me on as his apprentice. He gave me my morals in life. They all made perfect sense because they were the only thing that I had ever known. "_Life is like an incessant series of problems, all difficult with brutally limited choices, and a time limit." _The tall dark man with red eyes, who called himself Chapel the Evergreen, looked from me to the target across the room that I had just finished filling with holes._ "The worse thing is to make no decision, waiting for the ideal conclusion to present itself." _He returned his attention to me._ "Make the best choice in a split-second." _Then he paused for several long moments, I thought he was done talking so I began to reload the gun, but he put his hand on my shoulder to stop me and continued._ "We're not like God, not only are our powers limited but we sometimes have to play the Devil." _He looked down into my eyes and for the first time I saw his. Sad, and scared - but at the same time heartless.

__

I didn't want other kids to grow up like me so I started up and orphanage. It gave my life meaning. I was doing things for the good of others. It was my little bit of happiness. But sometimes I still think...this planet is the worst. It's a horrible planet.

The second man I ever killed was a complete stranger. I was eight and had been training with the man known as Chapel for one year. This time it seemed a nightmare; at first I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. The man was crying, begging me not to kill him, exclaiming over and over again that he didn't want to die; that he hadn't done anything. Finally I forced myself to pull the trigger, this time it seemed impossibly stiff, but when it finally gave the shot rang out just as clearly as before. The bullet entered the man's head, just as before; and just as before he fell to the ground dead. I was the only thing that had changed. I cried. I cried because I had killed a man that I had never even met before in cold blood. I didn't know him and as fare as I was concerned he didn't deserve to die.

I turned around, tears streaming down my cheeks, and saw the man called Chapel standing in the doorway. He was looking at me through those impenetrable sun-glasses. He wore a grim smile of satisfaction on his stony face. Ever so slowly he turned and walked out of the room. Still crying I got up to follow, but he closed the door and locked it. He left me in the room with the innocent man I had just killed. I couldn't believe it! I just stood there in shock, even the tears seemed to slow, but when I realized what he had just done I began crying even louder. I was locked in the room, not only with the dead man, but something far worse, myself. My own thoughts tortured me endlessly and for the next forty-eight hours I sat in the room with myself. I cried until I could cry no more; I cried until there was nothing left, nothing but hate. I hated my guardian for causing me to hate him. I hated the money that I had received, thirty double-dollars, it seemed like a lot to a seven year-old. Most of all, I hated Chapel. The man who took me in and began this horrible training after I had completed my mission. The man who had locked me in this room with a putrefying man and my festering conscience. That forty-eight hours would cause me to hate the man known as Chapel for the rest of my life, but even as I speak I see that he did it to teach me to hate. He did it to teach not to care. It was only business, and the man was going to die someday anyway. The human mind is so fragile, especially a child's...

My training lasted for ten terrible years. In that time Chapel was raising me to become none other than him. He posed as a priest. He did not know the word of God, although I didn't know that at the time so I believed everything that he had told me. The _fact _that killing was a way of life, and that the Bible encouraged it, was ground into my mind from the beginning; his dogma became mine. Than being the cased I was shocked, even disturbed, when, at the age of eighteen, I first set foot inside a church. 

Upon the completion of my training one year ago I was given a huge cross wrapped in canvas and bound in leather. Chapel told me that it was my tool for spreading "the good word". At first it was far to heavy for me to simply carry around, I had to drag it everywhere I went and when it came to fighting I nearly got myself killed on more than one occasion because it took me a while to lift the stainless-steel weapon to a decent firing position. However, after a year of hauling that weapon of death with me where ever I went I became very attuned to it's weight. It became as much apart of me as my arms or legs. It was merely an extension of my body. I had it with me the first time I had walked into a real church, and ironically, I had just gotten paid. One man's pain had been my pleasure. In my mind I had been spreading His good word. The preacher, to my surprise and delight, looked like Chapel...that is he dressed like him. The only difference that I could note at the time (other than his height and weight) was that he wore a white collar instead of a black one. The people were all dressed in their best. What's more, they all greeted me with a smile. The beheld me as a visiting minister and nothing more. Some, however, looked with more than a little suspicion when I took a seat in the back pew. I had my cross with me, clothed in cloth and leather as usual, and I noticed also a few interested glances toward it. 

The crowed hushed as the preacher began to speak. "We have been talking on the Ten Commandments for the past several weeks, and today we open with one of the most import. Especially on this planet, in this day and age." Ten Commandments? This was something very new to me. All my years of training under Chapel and I had never before heard anything like this. While I was still trying to place that simple sentence into a part of my dogma that made sense the preacher continued, and his words struck me harder and more painfully than I thought even possible. **_"Thou shall not kill!" _**

"What the hell!" I yelled before I knew what was going on.

The preacher regarded me for a brief moment then continued. "Thou shall not kill. In this day and age, on this planet, that commandment should be burned into all or our hearts. Since we first arrived here we have been nothing but savages. Reduced to killing one another. Let it be known that those who kill **_will _**face eternal damnation in hell! Let your soul be made clean..." He continued to speak but I heard little of what was said. My mind was racing. The very thing I had built my life on was collapsing all around me. I had killed so many men, and women! Chapel had made it a point to have me kill someone, for practice or money, twice a month. I had been doing that for the past ten years! In the past year I have been killing even more than that simply because it's my job. It was how I survived. I survived by the death of others. Others gave their lives, by my choice, so that I would live. So that I could have a place to sleep. Something to eat. Alcohol to drink. I don't know why I first changed so easily; perhaps it was God's will, perhaps it was not, but I changed. After the service, carrying my cross, I went and talked to the preacher. I told him that I had led "a troubled life" and that I wanted to become a real preacher. I spent another year in that little church in December studying the real Bible and the real God. It was very hard for me to accept at first, but as I learned I realized how much more sense it made. I never hung up my guns, for three more years after that I still carried the cross every where I went. I used it only in self defense, or to protect the innocent. 

Isn't it funny. You think you have escaped from your past, from all the terrible things that you have done. It never turns out that way though. Just like in everything else, in life your past has a way of catching up with you and becoming your future. There is nothing you can do to stop it. Destiny, no, providence, is what I would call it. Gods will. Perhaps that is why by some trick of the wind, I heard three gunshots from a small down more than ten miles away from where I had been riding my bike through the endless desert. By some terrible whim of mine did I change my course and turn towards that small town; and as the pawn of some greater good, or evil, I found the first true victim of my cross. 


	2. Looking in a Mirror

****

Looking in a Mirror

I feel that I must apologize. I have entered the story without really telling what it is about. For all you know it could be the story of my life from beginning to end, however, this is not the case. This is the story of three different people, three people that I have killed. These three people will haunt me to the grave...and beyond it I fear. The died by my hand, upon my cross. Three upon the cross. I have engraved there names around the barrel of the gun at its head and I will never forget them. 

Three gunshots cut through the continues rumble of my motorcycle. As I said whether by some trick of nature or providence I heard then and altered my course. I was nearly 300 iles from December, which meant that if I stopped I would not get home tonight. There were a million reasons why I shouldn't stop. First of all was that I was no longer an assassin. I was now an ordained priest. My cross was still with me, as always, and I still had the skills that I had learned from Chapel so I knew that I would be safe from any threats to my person. So without much thought I turned my bike to the south and found my past waiting for me.

The town was very small, no more than 700 people living in it. As you entered one end of town you could look down the dusty street and see the other end of town only a little more than two miles away. The first bar I saw I parked my bike and went in. I was greeted with little more than a look from the bartender. The other people paid me no mind and continued with there drinks and whores. There was an old record player setting on an unused piano playing a warped record of _The Entertainer. _I took a seat at the bar and got strait to the point. "What's the trouble in this town?"

"Trouble?" the bartender said with a perplexed look about him.

"About ten minutes ago I heard three gunshots come from this town."

"Mister," he looked at me square in the eye, "we mind our own business in this town, but if you must know it's nothing more than a little family dispute." He turned away from me and began cleaning a glass. "By the way of prying into others business: what's that?" He said, indicating my cross.

"I'm a traveling priest." Was my reply, it was not the first time I had used that phrase and little did I know that it would not be the last. 

"Oh, good." He turned and looked me up and down for the first time taking in who I really was. "We may need you before the day is out. I'm glad you stopped by." He turned and began washing another glass and without looking in my direction again he asked "Are you any good with funerals?"

"I have had some experience in that area before." I tried not to smile but I couldn't help it faced with the irony of that question. I got up and left the bar for a brief stroll downtown. Since I knew that I would be staying the night here I looked for a hotel to stay in and after and hour of searching I found the only one in town. After retrieving my bike from the front of the bar I returned and checked in, went to my room, ordered some whisky, and drank myself to sleep.

I awoke at midnight in a cold sweat. I didn't know at the time what woke me, then I felt it...someone else was in the room with me. There was no light, I could barely see two feet in front of me. I sat up, my back against the wall, and started to survey the room. Somewhere in front of me I heard the door open and then I saw what appeared to be two red circles floating where a man's eyes should be. Then it was gone and the door was closed, but I didn't have time to stop and think about what it might have been for just as the door closed _BOOM! _the sound of a gunshot rang out in the night. It seemed very close and at first I thought that it was in the room with me. Then there came another one. It pierced the silence of the night like a knife through flesh and I realized that it was coming from downstairs. Almost instinctively I jumped from the bed and grabbed the canvas-covered cross that was leaning against the wall and raced downstairs. The darkness was complete. i could see nothing of the room when I entered and it wasn't until I slipped in a warm pool of blood on the floor that I even knew someone had been killed. 

Tracking bloody footprints I stumbled to the door and found my way out onto the street. The moon was out and it cast a blue light over the town and the desert. I turned and looked back through the now moonlit door. What I saw caused me to turn away in horror and disgust. The clerk was laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He was soaked in it, but this was not what caused me to turn away. The man's eyes had been removed from his head and placed in his left had and the back of his head had been cut cleanly open. This was not an assassination, this was a brutality. A murder, for lack of a better word. The target was not chosen out of training or hate. I went directly to the Sheriff's office and reported the incident.

"Well, Father Wolfwood, we've done everything we can do for the time being." The Sheriff told me, but I wasn't really listening. The sun was shinning bright and I was trying to remove last nights brutality from my mind. "...you might pray for his soul. I don't know what faith he was, but I'm sure that it couldn't hurt."

"Yes." I said, "I'll do that." I looked back at the sky. I remember it well because it was the bluest I had seen it in longer than I could remember. "You could to one thing for me, Sheriff."

"What's that?" he said looking up from the paperwork he had started.

"I would like to see the body...if I could. It's been moved to the morgue, right?"

"Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem...but do you mind if I ask why?"

"I may be able to help in any investigation. Before I became a priest I was a..." I paused. I had almost said my first occupation, but I managed to catch myself in time. 

The Sheriff noticed the hesitation. "A what?"

"a...uh...medical examiner...examiners assistant." I covered with a brief, but very sheepish laugh. 

The Sheriff gave me the suspicious look that I was oh so used to by now and said: "Ok, follow me." We walked out of the office and took a right down the street. Now I noticed that it was not only bright out, but very hot! The makeshift morgue was about ten building down the street and when we entered I was amazed at how cool they were able to keep it considering the closest plant was in December. "It's only temporary," he said as we walked into the building, "until we can ship the body off to December." The body was setting on a table in the middle of the room, or rather, it was sitting on what appeared to be a table. As I lifted the cloth I discovered that it was actually a large block of ice. I could see that it was slowly melting, but it managed to keep the body cool for now. As I pulled back the sheet I grimaced once more at the sight of the eyeless face, but I had to look, to prove what I suspected to be the truth. There was no head wound. He had not been shot in the head. The thought of further removing the sheet disturbed me even more, but I had to know. I pulled the sheet down to the man's waistline. I counted to bullet-holes. One in the stomach. The other a few inches above it, just bellow the heart. It was obvious to me that it was done at close range, but I knew that even before the Sheriff gave me his report. It was a large caliber bullet, looked like a .45, that was enough to convince me. To shots the middle-lower torso with a .45; that what I was instructed to do by Chapel almost ten years ago. I knew now that my past had caught up with me and that it would very soon become my future.

I covered the body once more, thanked the Sheriff for his time and left. He stopped me just before I closed the door and asked: "Did you find anything?"

"No, but thank you again for your time. May you go with God's protection."

"Thank you, Father." And with that I left and returned hotel.

I stayed a week in that little town, it was a nightmarish time for I knew that somewhere in the same town was the man known as Chapel. My old master. The man who taught me everything that I knew. There were two more killing that week. Both done in the same style as the hotel clerk. Each time however a different part of the body was removed and placed into the victims left hand. I had returned to the bar that I first entered when I arrived at this town and eventually became friends with the bartender. Soon I was able to find out much more information than I ever wanted to know about the "family dispute" that first brought me to this town.

"Carlson is their name. If there is a rich family in this town it's them." He said to me once as I was drinking my whisky and reading my Bible.

"Carlson?" I said very confused, for I had not thought of the incident since I arrived and especially not after that first hellish night here.

"It's the name of the family. You said that you came here because you heard gunshots." He looked at me as if to say _'Come on, have you forgotten already?' _I gave a brief nod in reply. "This sort of thing had been going on with them for the past two years." he continued, "They've got a son, nine or ten years old, who loves guns more than life itself. They buy him every gun he so much as touches and about every six months he'll get really pissed off and start shooting random objects."

"Are there ever any people involved...I mean, does he ever use people as an 'object'?"

"Only once. Years ago he shot his sister in the foot. That's all the more violent toward other people he has ever been." He looked at me and smiled. "After that his parents threatened to take away his guns for a whole year. You can bet that he'd never be stupid enough to do that again."

"Let's hope not." I took a drink of my whisky and read another verse or two. "Where is the house at?"

"Hmm?" He muttered, eyeing me with real suspicion for the first time since I first walked into this bar.

"The Carlson House. You said they were rich so I assume that they have a pretty nice house. I'd like to go for a visit. Maybe spread some of His good word."

Give me one final look he said: "They're on the north side of town. You can't miss the house, it's the biggest one around." I got up and headed for the door. Carrying my cross with one hand and my Bible with the other. "Give my regards to Mr. Carlson, Father Wolfwood!" I gave a final wave of my hand and vanished out the door.

The Carlson House was gigantic when compared to the one or two room houses that surrounded it and abounded in the town. In reality it was nothing more than a small mansion, only three stories high with what looked like a small enclosed garden off to the right of the house. Just from looking at it from the outside I guessed twenty-five rooms, maybe thirty. I walked calmly up the path to the front door and rang the bell. I heard other bells ring throughout the house, but after three minutes no one answered. I rang again, this time waiting longer. After what I guessed was another five minutes I tried the door; it was open. "Hello?" I said to nothing but darkness as I stepped across the threshold. "My name is Nicholas D. Wolfwood, I'm a traveling priest and I would just like to talk to you and your son for a few moments." No answer. I continued further into the house. I knew not what to expect, but as I walked through the house it felt as if something was guiding me through the rooms. I had never been there before but I seemed to know where everything was. It felt like I had been there before, yet I knew that I never had. I knew that as I walked through the Great Room to the Main Hall I would find the Kitchen on the left and the Dinning Room on the right. 

The hall was in the Shape of a large cross. As I reached the branch of the arms I turned and saw that these led to separate staircases that lead upstairs. But none of the rooms in this hall were my destination. I knew that I would find what I was looking for in the garden. In the same strange way that I had known everything about the house I knew exactly which door led to the garden. It was the last door on the left. That struck me as odd, because I knew that the garden was on the right side of the house; how could the door to the garden be on the left? Even though my brain was screaming the logical thing, go through the door on the right, I followed what I knew to be true. The door on the left. Instantly I found myself in darkness, the darkness was more complete than even that first night in the hotel, but I continued to walk forward. Shortly, I was aware of the sensation of downward motion. Ever so gently the path had begun to slope downwards. I continued a few more steps before I ran into the wall. "Owch! Dammit! Son of a -" I caught myself there and said a brief prayer of forgiveness then felt my way through the darkness. I soon discovered that I had not entered a room as I had first believed upon running into the wall, but that the passage had simply turned. To the right. 

Carefully edging my way along the wall I soon found another right turn and what's more, I found light. About fifty feet away there was an opening to the outside. From where I was standing I could see a little green against the white light that was pouring through the darkness. It was the garden. Once I saw the light I hated the darkness. I sprinted the rest of the way down the passage and into the light. I felt the warm air on my face and saw the green of a carefully kept garden (probably the source of the families wealth), but as I looked down at my feet I realized that there were several patches of brown grass. Apparently at random intervals in a fairly straight line. My eyes followed it some twenty feet into the garden, then I found the family.

A father, a mother, a sister; no son, laying on the ground surrounded by dead grass. It looked as if they had left the world many days before in a great struggle. There bodies were decaying rapidly in the summer heat. Sand flies were already making nests in their bodies I walked over to them and though I could not smell them where I had first entered the garden, the smell became almost unbearable by the time I reached the bodies. _There were three of them. _The though went off in my mind like a gun. A gun...gunshots. Three gunshots are what drew me to this town, and now I had found the damage that they had done. I began to pray a frantic prayer for there souls and mine and...

A noise behind me tour my mind away from my words. The sound was one that I knew all to well. It was the sound of a .45 being cocked, made ready for firing. I turned to face the sound and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. One the other side of it was a boy, almost ten years of age would've been my guess at the time. He was wearing gray shorts and a black t-shirt, and he had a shaggy bunch of matted black hair on his head. "I'm sorry you had to see this, Father." He said to me as emotionless as a doll. "He didn't want you to find this. He hoped to scare you out of town, but he said to kill you if you found anything. Goodbye." In that instant I saw myself in him. The boy I described was me, I will never know what that boy truly looked like, only that I saw myself in him. The great potential for good...but the greater potential for evil. 

With one quick motion of my hand my cross came unclothed and was raided to a firing position. Before I even knew what had happened the boy fell to the ground, blood pouring onto the green grass, dead. I stared in shock and disbelief at what I had just done. I had killed a child without so much as a thought, when I hadn't killed a man in three years. Tears weld up in my eyes and began streaming down my face. That was the first time I had cried since I was locked in that room by Chapel as a boy, and it would be the last time for many, many more years.

I made my way back through the house; I hadn't touched the bodies...any of them. I had just left them to rot in the sun, and, since I never returned to that town after I left, as far as I know they are still laying in that garden to this very day. Once again I needed no one to guide me, I knew the house like I had lived in it for year and soon I found myself standing on the front steps, staring into the depthless, empty eyes of Chapel the Evergreen. "What...what have you done!" I demanded.

"Nicholas, I'm so glad to see you alive." He said with a smile, ignoring my remark.

"That's bullshit!" I screamed, almost before he could finish the sentence. "That boy was going to kill me, under you orders."

"We are, none of us, under our own orders now, Nicholas."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It does not matter. You hesitated, not in your actions, but in your mind. Remember, ever hesitation is another moment gone of life. Always remember that." He said, completely ignoring my question. "I knew that only one of you could come out of that house alive. You have my me proud, Nicholas. My prize student, and I thank God that your alive."

I couldn't control myself after that. With a series of swift moves, that he had taught me, I lunged at him, knocking him to the ground with the but-end of my cross. "Don't you ever mention the name of God again, you obsessive little shit! I swear I will kill you someday." I stopped yelling and turned toward the rest of the town. "I've killed so many," I said in almost a whisper, "what's one more. Sin is sin in God's eyes, no matter what the act."

"You've grownup, Nicholas. You're just the sort of man he needs."

"What?"

"Go to Augusta. A man of great power is waiting for you there. I know that you will see things his way once you talk to him; after talking to him, everyone sees things _his _way." A brief pause, and then to himself: "We are all pawns to him."

I left Chapel standing at the foot of the Carlson House, and that was the last time I saw him for nearly ten more years. To me he was a demon. I did not know the man who I was to meet, but I decided that I would go. At the time I knew what he wanted to talk to me about. If he had seen Chapel then he would no about me, and he probably would have a hit-list ready when I got there. If I had known what a terrible net of lies my life would become after meeting him I would never have gone to Augusta. At the time, however, I was not in my right mind. I was a priest, Father Wolfwood, I had just killed a child, someone who might have been saved. A stray lamb returned. 

I went to the nearest general store and bought my first pack of cigarettes. I had never even smoked before this, but I knew it had a calming effect on the body, and that was all I wanted. Returning quickly to my room I locked the, lit a cigarette, sat down on the bed, and thought. About life and death. Heaven and hell. God and Chapel. 


End file.
